Short Story 1 * Words and Their Absences

The doctor’s secretary’s French tipped nails tapped the space bar repeatedly, without actually holding it down to make an extra space. She had had deep eyes, the color of the sea water under the docks on a cold autumn day, which stared into the spaces of the Microsoft Word document like all of her work, would be done, and her problems would be solved if she just sat there. Even if she wasn’t wearing a shirt that she definitely didn’t find at a garage sale, I was shamefully aware that I would have judged her anyway, just at the way she was sitting.

I have in issue with that you know, judging people be accident I mean. I tend to… make snap judgments. It happens when you stay cooped up in a house for years, the only voices you hear only thinking the worst of other people.

That day I my light hair was pulled into a pony tail at the back of my head and I had taken a Sharpie to my jeans so they had a grocery list now neatly printed above the knee. Back when I lived with my mother she hid all of the pens and would only hand me a pencil one time a day, to finish my homework if I had any. Sharpies were my new favorite part of living with my dad. My shirt was faded and red and my sneakers had a hole where my pinkie toe was rubbing out. I made a mental note, to make a physical note of my need for shoes on my knee later.

The phone rang at the secretary’s desk.

I traced an invisible flower on my wrist.

“Ms. Evan?”

I looked up at the brown haired woman I had spent the last 10 minutes criticizing.

“The doctor will see you now,” she said with a smile. That was the thing about the people I judged, they generally were very nice people.

I nodded and stood up, walking over to the door that was being held for me, by a middle-aged woman I assumed was the doctor in question. She had graying hair and a nice smile.

She displayed her teeth for me even more as I followed her into her office where I sat down in a chair made of fake leather and smiles. The room was a bit too bright for my taste. “Mileanie isn’t it?”

I again, nodded and watched her.

Her name was Dr. Anderson. I tried as hard as I could not to think of all the flaws that were surrounding her. It was a dismal path finding all of the things people hated about themselves in your own face.

Especially when you don’t talk.

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§ 7 Responses to Short Story 1 * Words and Their Absences

Hmm. Well, I get that the mother is screwed up- that much is obvious. But I don’t understand HOW she was screwed up. But maybe I’m just missing the point. Either way, I wish you had elaborated a bit more about the mother and how life was like when the girl was living with her.
There were a few sentences that were phrased awkwardly- you’ll want to be careful of that, if you decide to redo it.
You did a good job with detail, as always, Ms. Sarah.
On one last note, I wish you could maybe contrast a bit more, about living with her mom vs. living with her dad. I know you said the pens and Sharpies thing, but maybe a few more examples? I just don’t quite see the reason for therapy.
All in all, magnificent ❤

Thank you for reading! See, on the mother- vs-father issues, and also on the issue of her therapy, it was mostly a Sarah-Got-bored-With-this-story-extremely-fast problem that I had which I solved by stopping before I got to any points I had actually wanted to make. So yeah, I know it ends abruptly without me making sense of things, and I probably won’t re-write, or even re-visit just because it was more of me just needing to write down fictional words than me actually writing Good words that Make sense.

Thank you so much for commenting and editing it, all of your suggestions are valid and make a lot of sense. ((Especially the one about my strange sentencing. I realized that as soon as I started the third paragraph, I just didn’t want to re-work it))